Gaza’s largest and second largest hospitals, Al Shifa and Al-Quds, said they were closing to new patients on Sunday. With half of the territory’s hospitals now out of action, there are ever fewer places for the injured.
Meanwhile, International NGO Human Rights Watch has said that Israel’s repeated attacks on medical facilities, health personnel and ambulances in Gaza should be “investigated as war crimes”.
The Israeli military’s “apparently unlawful attacks” are further destroying Gaza’s healthcare system at a time when medics have unprecedented numbers of severely injured patients, and hospitals have run out of medicine and basic equipment, the group said on Tuesday.
As of November 10, two-thirds of primary healthcare facilities and half of all hospitals in Gaza are not functioning, according to the United Nations. And as of November 12, at least 521 people, including 16 medical workers, have been killed in 137 “attacks on health care” in Gaza, the World Health Organization said.